


Breathe

by StoneWingedAngel



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Magical Realism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-09
Updated: 2013-11-04
Packaged: 2017-12-26 04:02:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 21,146
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/961341
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StoneWingedAngel/pseuds/StoneWingedAngel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock knows he has to die. He knows that his job is going to be dangerous, long, exhausting; that he’s going to get damaged. And so, desperate and alone, he gives John his soul, little knowing the consequences will be enough to drive them both to breaking point.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. A Gift

It’s past midnight by the time Sherlock gets the fake blood out of his hair, and almost one when he creeps up the stairs to 221b, brushing his fingers against wallpaper he knows he won’t see again for a long time, and hating himself for caring enough to do so. It’s just wallpaper. It’s just a door. It’s just a key turning in a lock, the soft swish of a door opening, a dark flat that smells of distress and dried tears. None of it _matters_.

John matters.

It has to be now, before the sun comes up. Time moves quickly once you’re supposed to be dead, and he can’t risk being spotted in London for a long time. It might be years before he comes back. The absence is necessary, but sentiment makes it painful. He’d always known that sentiment would complicate things, and he let himself be sucked into it anyway. John has a way of making the world seem more connected, more valuable. Value breeds sentiment. Simple logic, albeit logic that hurts with a strong, heavy ache.

Sherlock can hear slow breathing as he squints into the dark, picking out odd shapes that lurch at him in the form of half-shadows, lit by the glow of the streetlamp outside. John hasn’t drawn the curtains before falling asleep on the sofa, sprawled in a position that will make his shoulder ache in the morning. Sherlock uses the light from the uncovered window to pick his way across the room without tripping. Even with the utmost care it’s difficult, because John has been throwing things. His face, as he sleeps, still looks angry, brow furrowed.

Sherlock wastes no time, not because he doesn’t want to, but because waiting around will probably get them both killed. As it is, he’s taking a chance, risking being seen. But he knows what he needs to do, and he’ll do it. He’s going away for an indefinite period of time; he doesn’t want any part of him he doesn’t wholly need getting damaged. And John is…John is…

John has always been an anchor. Sherlock sees the two of them like a string folded over a stick, perfectly balanced by a weight at each end. And now his weight is gone, and he doesn’t know what will become of the string. But he doesn’t have time to think, much as he might want to – his decision has to be now, and final.

He kneels by the sofa and leans forwards. At first he takes one of John’s hands and holds it up to his mouth, but then he considers how easily hands can be damaged, simply on an everyday basis. John isn’t a careless man, but he might inadvertently sustain an injury to his fingers or palms, and the thought makes Sherlock shudder. He releases the hand, placing it carefully back onto the sofa, and shifts until his lips are a couple of centimetres from John’s neck. People are always very careful about their necks. He can see the pulse quivering in the throat, barely perceptible. That’s good; it means John is unlikely to wake.

Sherlock takes a deep breath, feeling it gather at the top of his lungs until he’s trembling with lack of air. He resists the urge to shut his eyes, keeping his gaze fixed on John’s throat, forcing himself to stare without blinking at the creases and shadows on the skin, the trembling second heartbeat of his pulse.

He breathes out. It isn’t like the usual release of air after holding breath for a long time; it doesn’t make him feel relaxed, or relieved. It hurts, like fish-hooks tugging at his chest, throat, between his eyes, on his fingertips. Not unbearable, but uncomfortable. He breathes out until his cheeks are pale and his eyes watering, heart pounding. Something without colour or smell – it isn’t fully tangible, more like a flash of light in the corner of an eye – passes from between his lips and latches to the first thing it finds. John’s neck.

Sherlock pulls back, chest heaving. For a second the not-quite-tangible thing hangs in the air, like a memory of an echo, and then it fades. Even Sherlock, who knows it’s there, cannot see it. He’s not given all of it away, because that would render him worse than useless, but most of it is with John, safe.

He won’t be seeing it, or John, for a long time. He’s unsure which absence will affect him the most.

John mumbles something in sleep and shifts on the sofa, bringing the hand Sherlock had abandoned a few minutes ago up to his throat and rubbing it. His brow furrows further, the lines like valleys in the shadow of the streetlamp, and then he relaxes again. Sherlock gets silently to his feet, feeling like he does when hasn’t eaten in days; like he’s not where he’s supposed to be. That he isn’t real.

Even when he leaves without looking back, locking the door with a click behind him, and puts his fingers to the jumping and kicking pulse in his wrist, he still feels like a ghost. He’s drained and aching, but it’s safe. It won’t protect his body, but it will preserve his mind, allowing rational thought, allowing everything else to be pushed aside. He needs to focus on doing a job, and nothing else. Already he can feel his emotions dimming. They aren’t gone, but he finds he can ignore them easily. 

Since John had first limped into his life, he hasn’t found it this easy.

He doesn’t think he’s ever been so cold, bone-cold even though he’s still indoors. Advantages, disadvantages; Sherlock has already weighed them up carefully on mental scales, and he’s made his decision. He can cope with the cold and the dizzy, lost sensation in the pit of his stomach. He can do it to keep John, and it, safe.

He can’t look back at the flat as he makes his way into the street, because he knows he won’t be able to leave if he does.

 

* * *

 

The first thing John thinks when he wakes is ‘my shoulder hurts’. The second is ‘Sherlock is dead’, and that clears the pain right up, ripping away the physical soreness in his back and neck and replacing it with an agony in his chest, a tugging throb that makes his head hurt. He doesn’t like the exchange; a stiff neck is uncomfortable, but the pain squeezing at his heart – somewhere in the right ventricle, perhaps – is so crushing it takes him half an hour to muster the energy to sit up.

His neck feels more than just stiff. At a guess, he’d say he’s coming down with a sore throat, only it doesn’t feel quite the same. If a sore throat could be outside, radiating onto the bare skin, he’d blame it on that, but that’s impossible, so he ignores it and concentrates on forcing himself off the sofa instead.

He makes two cups of tea, one with sugar and one without, and then realises, with an uncomfortable twist of his guts, that no-one is coming to drink the second one.

 

* * *

 

_Sherlock is five years old, sitting on the lawn in the bright sunshine with his hands cupped in front of his face, eyes wide. His knees are scraped and dirty, as always. Mummy hates it, but he doesn’t care. It’s summer. Summer is a time for exploration, and he can’t explore without getting muddy._

_A minute or two ago he’d fallen and had the breath driven out of him. Now, as he stares at his hands, he feels different. He’d been sure he’d seen something hovering against his palms, but now it’s gone, and his head feels light and strange._

_A bird flies overhead and casts a shadow on his outstretched hands, and he sees it again, a flash at the corner of his eye. He blinks and looks more closely, but it leaves again before he can understand._

_Sherlock hates not understanding, so when he sees Mycroft coming over the lawn towards him, he calls him over with a sharp “Mye!” Mycroft is twelve years old and he knows a lot of things. He will be able to explain._

_"What is it?” Mycroft says, crouching down in front of Sherlock and brushing at his knees, trying to get the dirt off them – Mycroft hates dirt almost as much as Mummy does. “What have you got in your hands?”_

_"I don’t know,” Sherlock murmurs. His voice seems distant._

_"It had better not be another spider. Mummy almost fainted last time you brought one in.”_

_Sherlock shakes his head. “It was here, and now it’s not.” He squints, cupping his hands in an attempt to see it more clearly, but the sight eludes him. “I fell, and now my chest feels funny. And there’s_ something _in my hands, but I can’t find it.”_

_Mycroft’s face has gone very pale. “Put it back,” he says, quietly, the sort of quiet that means he’s either worried or angry. A frown creases Sherlock’s forehead, and he swallows._

_“But I don’t know where it came from, so how can I put it back?” He looks at Mycroft earnestly. “What is it?”_

_“I’ll tell you later,” Mycroft murmurs, glancing back at the house. “Just put your hands up to your mouth, and take a deep breath. Concentrate.”_

_Sherlock obeys, even though he doesn’t like it when Mycroft won’t tell him things. Usually he says he’s too young. Sherlock doesn’t think he’s young; he’s five years old, and he can do anything he wants. But Mycroft looks so pale and worried that he brings his hands up to his lips and takes a deep breath, the kind he takes before putting his head under the bathwater so he can be a shipwrecked pirate._

_The strange aching in his chest lifts as he breathes in, feeling his lungs inflate. There’s a rushing sound in his ears which reminds him of the noises found inside a seashell, and then the birds seem louder again, and he blinks._

_Mycroft is sitting on the grass, even though it’s muddy and he’ll be getting his trousers dirty, so Sherlock knows he must still be worried._

_"Mye?” he asks, putting his hands down. They feel lighter, less precious, than they had a few seconds ago, as if he’s just put down something glass and expensive. “What is it?”_

_Mycroft shakes his head. “Later.”_

_Sherlock pouts. “What if mummy says you can tell me now?”_

_Mycroft goes paler. “No,” he says. “No, you can’t tell mummy. Do  you understand?”_

_Sherlock is perplexed; Mycroft has never asked him to keep a secret from mummy before. He tells her everything, even when Sherlock doesn’t_ want _him to tell her about the frogspawn in the bath, or the fact he’d burned another hole in the rug._

_“Why?”_

_“Trust me.” Mycroft puts a hand on Sherlock’s knee for a second, squeezing tightly. “Please.”_

_Sherlock hesitates, looking at his brother for a very long time, hands pressed against each other and the confused, inquisitive frown still resting on his forehead. But, eventually, he nods his agreement._


	2. A Funeral

Even by the sixth day, John keeps making the same mistakes. He makes two cups of tea every morning and ends up drinking both, calls out to an empty flat that the mess of books and papers need clearing, and buys bicarbonate of soda for experiments that will never happen. It’s maddening.

The funeral is on the seventh day. It’s the first day John remembers to make one cup of tea, and that’s only because the fact he’s in his suit tells him constantly that Sherlock is dead, and he’s going to bury him.

The weather is cold and crisp. John forgets his scarf and gloves, and he puts his coat in inside-out. Sherlock would have hated the whole affair, he knows; the formal cars, the dull looks, Mycroft. He’d be bored to tears, if he were here.

But he isn’t here, so John goes through with the whole affair without protest. There are more people than he’d expected, crushed into the small room with a few polished benches. Molly is less weepy than John had prepared for her to be – he supposes she’s made of sterner stuff than he’s given her credit for – and Mycroft remains impassive throughout the whole thing, carved of stone. He doesn’t even make a speech. Lestrade comes in at the back just before it starts and avoids John’s eye all the way through. John can’t bring himself to blame him for what happened. He’s too numb.

John makes his speech beside the coffin, but he hasn’t prepared it properly and the whole thing comes out a mess of garbled words, interspaced with breaths that are somehow never deep enough to stop his chest aching. He feels as if he’s being disrespectful to Sherlock’s memory, being so disorganised; Sherlock hated idiots. He hated rambling.

In the end John ends his speech, face pale and ears burning red, with an impromptu ‘God, I’m going to miss him’ and sits down to resume staring at his feet. He tries not to look at the coffin, even when they carry it out and put it in the ground. He looks at the trees instead, at the sky, focuses on the way the wind bites at his bare fingers.

It’s because he’s so desperate to distract himself from the freshly turned earth that he realises his neck isn’t cold. The rest of him is freezing, shivering in his too-tight suit, but his throat remains warm. John frowns and put a hand to his neck, brushing his cold fingers over the skin. He feels the chill, but it’s not as intense as he’d imagined it would be. Perhaps he’s coming down with something, an illness that’s screwing with his temperature controls. Is it possible to have a fever in just his throat?

It isn’t uncomfortable enough to be a fever.

As everyone begins to walk away from the fresh earth John is left behind with Mrs Hudson on one side and Lestrade hovering awkwardly behind him. They say nothing and neither does John, but, as he keeps his hand pressed against his bizarrely warm neck, he feels almost comforted.

* * *

 _It’s late at night when Sherlock, told by mummy to go to bed without pudding because she’s found out about the woodlice in the teapot, decides he can’t stand not knowing a second longer. He’s waited at_ least _five hours since the garden, and it counts as much later._

_He slides out of bed, too-large pyjamas flapping around his ankles, and slips silently out of his bedroom. Mummy is downstairs – he can hear the television playing the shows she likes to watch, dull situations and dull characters that some people find funny, but Sherlock finds annoying. Mycroft’s room is two doors down and he enters without knocking to find his brother bent over the desk, scratching out sums with a pencil and chewing his lip in concentration. He looks up when he hears the door click open._

_"You’re supposed to be in bed.”_

_Sherlock goes to Mycroft’s bed, sits on the covers – blue, plain, boring – and crosses his legs. “I’m in a bed now.”_

_Mycroft puts his pencil down with a soft clatter and spins in his chair to face Sherlock. “Your own bed. You’ll get us both into trouble.”_

_Sherlock sticks out his tongue. “You promised you’d tell me later. It’s later now.”_

_Mycroft’s face grows pale and still again, and he brings his hands together in his lap, looking down at them for a few moments before sighing and nodding. “But only if you promise to go to bed afterwards.”_

_Sherlock feels a thrill of triumph as he agrees readily, leaning forwards on the bed and waiting for his answers. Mycroft doesn’t say anything; he doesn’t begin to explain. He just lifts his hands to his mouth, looks closely at his palms for a few seconds, and then breathes out. Sherlock knows he should hear a rush of air, the soft whooshing that comes when people sigh or gasp in relief, but he hears nothing. Mycroft’s breath leaves his lips silently._

_Something seems to hover on Mycroft’s palms for a split second, and then Sherlock blinks, and he loses track of it. Even when he scrambles off the bed and tugs at Mycroft’s wrist to bring his hands down to eye level, he sees nothing. He scowls and pouts._

_"That doesn’t explain anything. There’s nothing there!”_

_“There is.” Mycroft brings his hands out of reach again. “You just can’t see it.”_

_“Like air?”_

_“A bit. It’s…” He shrugs. “I suppose, one might call it a soul.”_

_At five years old, Sherlock has yet to grasp concepts such as a soul. He has a vague understanding, but his small brain welds a soul, a personality, and a heartbeat together all into one, and that means the facts don’t fit._

_"But you’re not dead,” he whispers. “And you’re still you.”_

_“I haven’t got all of it here; some of it stays behind.” He holds his hands cupped under his lips and breathes in sharply. The movement is sudden enough to make Sherlock jump, although no sound is created, as before. Mycroft blinks a few times, and the colour seems to return to his cheeks. “I can’t really explain what it is. Or how it works. I just call it a soul for convenience.”_

_“But can_ other _people do it?”_

_“I don’t know, Sherlock.”_

_Sherlock bites his lip. He understands very little. “We could ask mummy.”_

_Mycroft lowers his hands and puts them on Sherlock’s shoulders, firmly. “No. I tried, when I was younger. She didn’t understand. She didn’t believe me.”_

_“But she’d believe both of us!” Sherlock exclaims._

_A sound comes from downstairs and they both freeze, waiting, but there are no footsteps on the stairs._

_“That’s what I’m afraid of.”_

_"Why would you be afraid of her believing you?” Surely Mycroft didn’t like being called a liar?_

_"People are dangerous when they don’t understand.” Mycroft moves his hands from Sherlock’s shoulders to take his wrists instead, holding them tightly in the way he does to make them both feel safe during a storm, or if mummy and daddy are shouting. “You must be very careful who you trust your soul to, Sherlock.”_

* * *

On the seventh day Sherlock wakes with tears in his eyes he knows aren’t the product of his own thoughts. John must be having nightmares again.

He’s never given his soul away before now. He’d done it to keep it safe, to make his job easier, but he’s rapidly learning there are implications he hadn’t even considered. His own emotions may be dulled and dethatched, but he feels what can only be John’s very sharply. Not all the time; they come in fits and starts that hit him like punches to the chest or face. John’s sadness is most common, and most painful. The funeral is when it reaches its peak – Sherlock knows it must be the funeral, because John’s internal agony is constant, tugging at Sherlock’s chest for full hours. It leaves him curled on his bed, surrounded by the night – he finds it odd to think that where John is, it’s daytime – with tears in his eyes. They aren’t _his_. He convinces himself it’s not him feeling this. It’s John. It has to be John.

Sherlock Holmes doesn’t cry, even if he is experiencing crushing guilt and another man’s grief at the same time.

Of course, there are still advantages. He kills his first two men without any complication, and when he gets injured, receives, for his troubles, a long cut to his upper arm, he feels it less intensely, is able to carry on regardless. He doesn’t get scared; he’s able to focus only on the work. He doesn’t feel hunger; or if he does, it’s even less than he used to. He wonders if he’s some version of the walking dead, and laughs hysterically as the thought crosses his mind, until he’s wrung out and exhausted, crumpled on the threadbare sheets, still with John’s tears on his face.

It’s a strange thing, to mourn himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> To be continued!


	3. A Puzzle

" _Mye?"_

" _Yes Sherlock?"_

" _Why do people have souls?"_

" _I don't know."_

* * *

As the days turn into weeks John stops crying so much and starts to pull himself together. Mostly. The nightmares don't help matters, but he gets through them. At first he does it by drinking, until he realises he's doing exactly the same things Harry did when she started, and quickly gets rid of every drop of alcohol in the flat, switching to coffee and novels that are intended to be funny, but he knows are just trash. They're a crude form of distraction, but they work, and he doesn't want to go off the rails. He supposes he still has people to live for.

Mrs Hudson is the biggest help, because she calls on him every day under the pretence of bringing up homemade buns or tidying the flat – 'not your housekeeper, just doing you a favour' – and it's like having his mother keeping an eye on him. He decides he has to be there for her, just as she has decided she must stay for him.

John isn't happy. He isn't even normal. He's grieving, and sometimes he can barely stand under the weight of it, but he carries on.

He and Greg start talking to each other again, quite by chance. They meet in the supermarket, standing in the long queue for the tills, and can't avoid striking up a conversation. They don't talk about Sherlock. The subject is censored and covered over with chat about the football and the price of shaving cream and a whole host of stupid, boring things. John relishes in the activity; it helps him forget for a few moments.

It's hard to forget. Constantly there's the unsettling sense that he's never alone. Ever since the first night, when he'd hurled books and ornaments around in his anger, he's had the feeling someone's watching him. Not watching. It feels more like breathing; every time John moves his chest, he feels as if there are two people inhaling. It puzzles him, but he puts it down to loneliness. His brain is overcompensating, trying to convince him someone else is there.

Often, he dreams about Sherlock. Sometimes it's past memories, nightmares about blood and pavements, things he expects. Sometimes it's things he doesn't understand. He sees Sherlock with his hair cropped short, eating in a strange restaurant, or wearing a hooded jacket he knows Sherlock would never have chosen to put on, speaking to someone in a foreign language. He can't make any sense of it.

He wakes up one night after a dream in which he'd seen Sherlock slipping a knife into his pocket, feeling off-kilter and unhappy. As he sits up he's aware of it more strongly, the inhale and exhale, a rhythm that isn't his own, and wonders if Sherlock's ghost is standing behind him.

Ghosts don't breathe, he knows that much. When he calls out he gets no reply.

* * *

" _Mye?"_

" _Mm?"_

" _Can anyone else do the thing with their souls?"_

" _I don't know, Sherlock."_

* * *

Over time, instead of becoming more able to manage John's emotions, Sherlock feels them more frequently, mostly when his brain isn't distracted. He doesn't sleep all that much, but when he does his dreams are influenced by whatever John is doing. Mundane activities usually, conversations with Greg, Mrs Hudson, buying milk and jam, wandering the streets in London. He finds the dreams both infuriating, because they make him miss John all the more, and comforting, because John doesn't seem to be crying as much as he had been at first.

* * *

" _Mye?"_

" _What is it, Sherlock?"_

" _Would you ever give your soul to someone?"_

" _Why would I want to do that?"_

" _To keep it safe."_

" _How would you know they'd keep it safe?"_

" _If they promised to keep it safe, who would you give it to?"_

" _I don't know."_

* * *

Sherlock makes his mistake about four months after dying, in Russia, which still writhes in the clutches of an icy winter. It's inevitable he'll slip up; he's horribly run down, jet-lagged and lost in a new place, following leads which he knows can easily be false. He's killed two men and one woman, and left more for Mycroft to deal with, but he doesn't feel like a murderer, even though he knows he should.

Somehow, the man he's tracking gets wind of what's been happening to his associates, and decides to get one step ahead. He comes at night, when Sherlock's still checking his equipment and lacing up his shoes, ready for another long slog, chases through narrow streets that he knows will leave him exhausted. He's momentarily distracted by the sudden sensation that someone's pressed a hand against his chest, something he gets when John touches his neck, obliviously passing his hand all the way through Sherlock's soul. The feeling is intense, and causes him to shudder, making breathing difficult. He's forced to lean over, hands onto knees, and it's because he's trying to keep his breathing even that doesn't realise anything is wrong until he feels a breeze on the back of his neck and turns to see the window of the cheap hotel is open.

He reaches for his knife a second too late – something pricks his arm and he whips around with a snarl, only to find out the feeling in his legs has decided to go on holiday without his permission.

He's unconscious before he hits the floor.

* * *

" _Mye?"_

" _For god's sake Sherlock, what is it?"_

" _Nothing."_

" _I'm distracted now. Ask."_

" _Why do you never want to talk about the souls?"_

" _I'm just busy a lot."_

" _You're lying."_

" _Why do you care?"_

"…"

" _I…I don't like to talk about it because it makes me feel like a freak."_

" _Am I a freak too, then?"_

" _No, Sherlock."_

* * *

John is out at the pub with Greg when it happens. It's become a weekly routine, to go out on a Thursday, have a beer or two – nothing excessive, and John sometimes doesn't drink at all – and talk about how their weeks have been.

The weather is beginning to warm, and John is sweating in his shirt, surrounded by the crush of people. The only part of him that feels cool is his neck, which is soothed, as if he has a cool cloth pressed against it.

It's his neck Greg's staring at when he suddenly trails off and frowns, squinting in the dim light until John feels compelled to put a hand up to his Adam's apple.

"What?"

Greg blinks and looks away. "Nothing." He rubs his eyes. "Must have been a trick of the light."

John's forehead wrinkles in worry – he's been concerned about his neck recently. Not because it feels bad, or because it hurts, but just because it feels…different. And as a doctor, he's wary of anything that might feel out of the ordinary. It's his emotions too, which seem to be all over the place lately, unrelated to whatever situation he's in; hysterical laughter when a second ago he'd been worrying about the gas bill, a thrill of fear when he's merely sitting in the flat, staring at the wall. He can't find any explanation for it, and he's been considering getting it checked out for a couple of weeks.

"What did you see?" he asks. "Tell me."

Greg swallows his mouthful of beer before replying. "I don't know. I just thought I saw a shadow on your neck…" He shrugs. "I'm sure it's nothing; my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. You know, I'm considering getting glasses…"

Just like that, they're off the topic, and John forgets for a few minutes. As they stand up to go he feels something sting against his arm and slaps it absentmindedly, assuming it's some kind of fly. The pain fades as quickly as it had begun.

He manages three steps before his mind begins to fog. The first thing he does it glance at his bare arm, prompted by his gut instinct reminiscent of the army, but there's nothing there. He hasn't had more than one beer, and no-one's been near his drink all evening, he's sure.

"Greg…" he murmurs, swaying. His legs are numb. "I don't feel well…"

Greg turns towards him, concerned, and quickly helps him sit back down again. John can't feel the seat beneath his legs, even though he knows it's there, even though he pushes his fingertips to it, gripping tightly and breathing slowly. He can't concentrate.

"What is it? Do you need a doctor?" Greg's voice sounds as if it's covered in static; John can barely make out the words. He shakes his head, trying to clear it, but it doesn't work, and he slumps against the back of the seat, eyes dropping closed before he can stop them. He's gone too quickly to hear Greg shouting for help.


	4. A Nightmare

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WARNINGS FOR THIS CHAPTER: Violence and description of blood.

Sherlock wakes to find himself tied down, one hand latched to each post of the bed, arms forced into an awkward, stretched posture which pulls painfully at his shoulder blades, causing them to click when he breathes. His panic, as always, is dulled, but he does have a sense of suppressed fear which sets his chest heaving.

The window of the room is still open, and his lips are deadened by cold. Whatever had been pumped into his system is still in effect, making his head spin and his vision fuzzy, but he's awake now. He can do something, anything. His legs are free, and that gives him some chance.

Before he can force himself to engage in action his knees click as a weight settles on his legs, pinning them, and he feels the touch of a steel blade against his throat. Someone, deep voiced, wearing black gloves, spits something out in Russian, and although he only recognises one word – 'you' – out of about five, the malice radiating from it makes him shudder. His skin twitches under the press of the knife, leaving minute cuts peppered on his Adam's apple.

"I don't understand," he says quietly, partially telling the truth, but mostly playing for time. "I am English. I don't know what you're saying."

The man doesn't reply, so Sherlock dares to angle his head to look at his face. He's disappointed – a hood and balaclava serve better than a disguise. He can tell a little from the man in a glance, age and occupation, but nothing that will help him.

"Who you work for?"

The phrase is halting, spoken in a thick accent, but possible to understand. Sherlock swallows, and the knife slices into his skin again. Blood trickles onto the bed sheets.

"I don't work for anyone."

"You are…alone?"

It's a gamble – if Sherlock says no, the man may kill him in order to make a hastier escape, afraid of being caught by someone who doesn't exist. If Sherlock says yes…well, no-one can hear him scream up here. The wind brushes against his numbed lips, making his teeth ache.

"Yes. I am alone."

The knife twitches, but doesn't pull back. "Why you hunt us?"

Sherlock thinks the language barrier makes the whole thing sound far too dramatic. This isn't a hunt; it's a job, it's the work, and it's to keep John, and the others, safe. The thought occurs to him that if he dies now, if this man escapes, John will be dead within weeks. Probably days. Word of mouth travels quickly amongst people who are scared for their lives.

He chooses his next words carefully, making them as complicated as possible, speaking quickly to add further confusion. "I am endeavouring to annihilate the web."

The knife presses closer. "I do not understand your words. Say again."

"I am compelled to obliterate-"

"No! Speak simple to me, or you die."

Sherlock grits his teeth as the knife jabs into his neck again and blood begins to flow rapidly, warming a small portion of his cold skin, but he knows the man won't kill him without getting his answers, no matter what he threatens. What Sherlock needs right now is anger. Anger makes people irrational, it makes them stupid, it creates accidents and mistakes.

"It is my contractual obligation-"

This time, it works. The man brings back his free hand and clouts Sherlock on the side of his head, causing his already-fuzzy vision to blur further as his chin snaps round. The knife slips on his throat and leaves a long, shallow gash, but for a few vital heartbeats the blow has put it out of range of his jugular. Sherlock takes his chance and brings up his legs and hips with a sharp jerk, causing the man to lurch sideways. The next few seconds are complete confusion – the knife nicks his collarbone with a cold sting, a fist slams into his cheekbone, his feet find their mark with a soft crunch and the man slides off the bed with a thud, gasping for breath. Broken ribs, Sherlock prays, keeping his legs kicking as the man tries to claw his way back up, striking at the face and hands reaching for him, anywhere he can land a blow. The knife bounces up and down on the pillow as he fights desperately to reach it with just his fingers, wrists still bound hopelessly to the bedposts.

The knots, although impossible to undo, stretch, chafing at his wrists. The ties are ripped material which allow him just enough leeway to touch his fingers to the blade, and, wriggling and snarling, brow wrinkled in concentration and sweat beading his upper lip, Sherlock finally manages to grasp it. At the same time the man dodges around his flailing feet and, shouting words that, although foreign, can only be obscenities, lunges for Sherlock's head. The knife makes a sucking noise as it buries into the windpipe.

Blood pours onto Sherlock almost immediately, spattering his open eyes and making them sting, flowing into his mouth and leaving a salty coating on his teeth. He gags and jerks, effectively throwing the body, still with the knife embedded in it, off him and onto the floor with a thud. He's left, gasping for breath, still attached to the bedposts.

For a few seconds he considers calling for help, but he doubts he'll be able to make himself understood to the Russian police. The man he's just murdered might not have been alone, and Sherlock bemoans the fact he hasn't been able to get any information out of him – now his trail has gone cold.

He curses, low and guttural, and tips his head back against the pillow with a groan. His chest his hurting more than ever. He misses John. Picking up the trail will take more time, more people he has to contact, possibly more he has to kill.

Damn it all.

The only way to get free, he discovers, is to rub his already sore wrists against the torn strips until he tears the skin and his blood wets the material enough for him to be able to slip out.

* * *

John wakes with a gasp from a bizarre nightmare in which he'd seen Sherlock, captured and tied down, covered in blood, kicking and struggling. He wonders briefly if hell exists, and if so if he's just seen Sherlock in it. The thought is a disturbing one, and it makes him feel sick and dizzy; all this time he's believed that Sherlock is at least at peace. Now, he's forced to reconsider.

John has never been a particularly religious man. He has been known to pray, but it's usually in times of extreme agony – when he was dying in a desert, or standing at Sherlock's grave begging for miracles – so he's always been unsure if it counts.

It doesn't matter, he tells himself firmly. There's nothing he can do. Just a dream, and here he is, getting het up.

Where is here?

He scrubs tears out of his eyes and gathers his wits enough to look around, the smell of antiseptic making his head spin. Definitely a hospital then, although he can't remember getting here. The last thing he remembers is talking to Greg, and then the world had gone sideways and dark.

He puts a hand to his neck again, swallowing and feeling his throat bob under his fingers. Now, he's definitely worried. The strange sensation in his neck, his emotional swings, and now sudden fainting fits? It doesn't bode well. Greg had been staring at his neck earlier – what if he'd seen a lump, and dismissed it?

John shudders, mouth going dry. He needs tests. No point in putting it off, and he's already in a bloody hospital. He needs answers, the sooner the better. His heart is fluttering and his head pounding, panic making the strange breathing rhythm he sometimes feels step up a pace. He wonders if he's going mad.

He sits, sweating, with the bed sheets tangled around his legs and one hand pressed to his neck for over five minutes before the door opens, bringing light into the dingy room. John drags his fingers from his throat and covers his eyes instead, blinking until it becomes bearable, and then focuses on the person who, in the space of a few seconds, has moved elegantly from the doorway to a nearby chair.

Even without the umbrella the way the legs are crossed tells him who it is straight away; he hasn't seen Mycroft since the funeral, and John is still angry with whatever part, no matter how small, the man might have played in Sherlock's death. Of course, he's angrier at himself, especially when he re-thinks what he might have done or said –  _you machine_ – but it isn't just that. John and Mycroft belong to two different worlds, and the man bridging that gap is gone. John doesn't want to deal with it right now.

"Why are you here?" he mutters, pulling the sheets over him defensively, putting a barrier between tem. "Where's Greg?"

"Detective Inspector Lestrade was forced to return to his work. An urgent case came up that required his attention."

John rolls his eyes. "You could just call him Greg. I don't think he'd mind."

Mycroft purses his lips in what could be considered a smirk. John wonders if he has the right to smile. It's been four months, but John doesn't smile much. He might choke out a laugh every now and then to please someone, but his eyes don't match his mouth.

"I hardly think it matters."

"Why are you here?" His tone is sharp, and he can't bring himself to look Mycroft full in the face, staring at a point on his chin instead, where he doesn't have to make eye contact or worry about what might be deduced about him.

"Believe it or not, Doctor Watson, my brother cared about you a great deal. I am here to ensure your continued wellbeing."

John snorts. "Yeah. Great. I'm just peachy."

"The nurses are concerned about what occurred. It all seems very…unusual."

"Well." John shrugs, still angry, but more willing to talk. Mycroft is here now; he might as well tell him. "I don't know. One minute I was fine, the next…it was like I'd been anesthetised or something, everything was fuzzy and I just went. Only, no-one was there to inject me, and I know I wasn't spiked." He glances up. "Was I?"

"They checked your blood. Nothing except a small amount of alcohol."

John nods. "Maybe I'm just run down." Before he can stop himself he's brought a hand to his neck again, rubbing at it, trying to find something bad. It doesn't feel  _wrong_. Just odd. His fingers discover no obvious marks, nothing that might have drawn attention a problem.

"You are concerned about your neck?" Mycroft's voice causes John to start and jerk his hand away, flushing. For a good few seconds he considers waving the whole thing off, and then he decides he's too dizzy and panicked and tired to bother concealing it any longer. It's not like Mycroft will care anyway; he's only here because of Sherlock. It's a token obligation that means nothing.

"Yeah. It's been feeling a bit…strange, for the past few months. Well, ever since…Sherlock." He swallows, and decides not to mention the fact he's been seeing – or rather, sensing – ghosts. "Pretty much the same time he…you know. And Greg thought he saw something there, right before I passed out. I thought I'd rather be safe than sorry, get some tests. Consult someone."

Is it his imagination, or does Mycroft's face shift for a few seconds from placid to concerned, and then surprised? The change is fleeting but John spots it, even in the dim light.

"I am sorry to hear you're worried." Mycroft gets to his feet a lot more hastily than he'd sat down and makes for the door. "You will inform me of any changes, regarding your health?"

John raises an eyebrow, fiddling with the sheets absentmindedly. "I suppose. If you want to hear."

"I do. Very much so. But if you'll excuse me, I have some urgent business to attend to."

John waves a hand dismissively. "Yeah, I know. Government won't run itself, blah blah." He smiles; for some reason, Mycroft hasn't irritated him as much as he'd thought he would. The smile is only a half one, but it's there, and he finds he doesn't mind having it on his face. It's not a betrayal. It's just a smile. "Thank you for coming."

Mycroft gives him a stiff nod. "You're very welcome."

John sighs as the door closes, and lies back down on the covers, one hand to his neck again. If Mycroft cares, then it must be bad.


	5. A Fool

"You complete idiot, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock, leaning over the sink with someone else's blood running to pink down the plughole, wonders what he's done this time. He's tired and irritable, the cut on his collarbone is throbbing, and he hasn't managed to get the taste of the assassin's blood out of his mouth because he doesn't own any toothpaste. John has hardly let go of his neck for the past five minutes, and it's making Sherlock dizzy.

"This number is only for emergencies, Mycroft."

"This is an emergency. I'll have the phone destroyed afterwards, and we're scrambling the message. It's bouncing off five different satellites. Believe me, this is a very important call."

"Oh, I'm sure," Sherlock murmurs, trying to preserve his lazy, bored tone. It's difficult. He can feel John breathing, thousands of miles away. "What is it then?"

"You gave it to him."

The words make Sherlock jump, and he almost drops the phone. His voice slips, becoming more strained. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Yes you do. You gave him your soul, without telling him what you were going to do."

"I couldn't tell him," Sherlock snaps, latching onto the part of Mycroft's statement he can explain most easily. "He'd know I was alive."

Mycroft snorts, contempt leaking through the phone like acid. "Have you any idea what you've done?"

"It was to keep it safe!"

"Are you sure about that?"

Sherlock is brought up short, nostrils flaring. The mirror on the wall is cracked, and when he looks at it he sees several faces, cut into slices. All of them are thin and pale and bruised. He looks away sharply. "What do you mean?"

"Are you sure you weren't being selfish?" There's the sound of a glass being put down at the other end of the line – Mycroft rarely drinks unless it's an emergency. When he's under 'pressure' as he puts it. "John Watson is the closest thing to a friend you have. Are you sure you didn't want to stay near to him?"

"Of course not," Sherlock spits, too quickly, too guiltily. "I…this is the most dangerous work of my life. I didn't want it getting damaged. John will keep it safe."

"Without knowing of its existence?"

Sherlock rolls his eyes. "That's the point."

"You're a fool." Mycroft draws a deep breath. Sherlock readies himself for the onslaught, and wonders if he should just hang up, but in the end decides against it – Mycroft, even when incensed, is the friendliest voice he's heard in weeks. "He thinks he's got cancer."

Sherlock almost drops the phone again, a frown creasing his features. Panic flares quickly, although it feels so strange and unattached that it almost seems distant. John is ill? John can't be ill. John has to be alright. "What?"

"He knows there's something there. It's your soul, Sherlock, your damn  _soul_  – you didn't think he'd possibly not sense there was something there, something personal? He thinks there's something wrong with his neck." A brief pause. Sherlock grits his teeth as his head spins again. "That's where you put it, isn't it?"

No point in denying it. "Yes."

"He doesn't understand, and he won't guess. But god knows what it'll do to him eventually, or you."

"It will do nothing," Sherlock growls. "It's just  _resting_ there; it's not doing any harm."

"You really think that?"

Mycroft's tone is resigned rather than superior. Sherlock pricks up his ears. "What?"

"John was rushed to the emergency room a few hours ago. When I asked him, he likened his experience to an anaesthetic. How long were you unconscious, Sherlock?"

Sherlock remains stubbornly silent. Mycroft stops trying to re-engage him in the conversation after more than five minutes have passed, and hangs up the phone with further scolding and the words 'take care of yourself'.

As soon as he's gone Sherlock drops the mobile and sinks to his knees, pressing the palms of his hands to his eyes. He's sweating and shivering at the same time, nose heavy and warm. He feels a shock to his chest and gags as someone – not John, he can tell it's not John – passes a hand through his soul, through his body. It's more than painful; it's sickening. He retches and brings up bile. Breathing becomes difficult.

By the time the feeling fades he's curled on the floor, face buried in the crook of his arm. It's not the sickness, or the telling off he's received that leaves him most distressed and exhausted. It's the knowledge that whatever happens to him will also happen to John.

He'd never considered that could happen. If he had he wouldn't have put his soul within a foot of John – the whole point of this endeavour was to keep him safe. Sherlock had known he would grieve, would be angry, would move on and no doubt never want to see Sherlock again. But he'd been convinced he would be safe.

And now, Sherlock isn't sure he can keep either of them protected.

* * *

" _Mummy?"_

" _Yes?"_

" _Do you believe in souls?"_

" _I'm busy, Sherlock."_

* * *

John's tests come back completely clean.

He's surprised, although certainly gratified. Always nice to know you aren't dying; he may be miserable and lonely, but he doesn't want to die.

There had been a lot of fuss when he'd suggested it, relayed his symptoms to far too many people – blood and samples had to be taken and tests had to be done, questions had to be answered. They say there's nothing wrong with his neck except a very small temperature difference compared to the rest of his body. Apparently, there's no explanation for that.

According to the charts and scans, there's hardly anything wrong with him. His fainting fit, which now leaves him feeling stupid and embarrassed, is a mystery, a blip, and his changes in mood are put down to 'middle age'.

Middle age. Pah. He's not that old.

Still, he's glad it's over. There had been too many people prodding him, touching his neck. He's rapidly learned he doesn't like people going anywhere near his throat. It makes him feel funny.

Mycroft comes to see him for an 'update', and although he appears pleased by John's all-clear news, he doesn't seem surprised.

* * *

_Sherlock is eight years old when Mycroft walks in on him experimenting with his soul. He's furious, even though Sherlock's doing nothing more than breathing it into his hands, looking for it, and then putting it back. He lectures Sherlock for what feels like hours – dull, Sherlock hates being shouted at, it takes up valuable time – about 'discretion' and what would happen if mummy were to find out._

_Sherlock isn't sure she'd care._

_It isn't long before he's taking the experiments further. He's never been like Mycroft, content to sit still and let things exist unless they specifically need fixing. He likes to push boundaries, find out, learn. And here he has something all to himself, something wonderful. The chances of him not trying to do more are less than zero._

_He takes to experimenting at night, when even Mycroft has gone to bed, cross-legged on his duvet with a torch. He finds that if he puts his soul in his hands it'll stay there, no matter how much he waves them about. It sticks._

_Sometimes, if it's at the right angle, the light will cast a shadow on it. It's always a brief glimpse, gone before it can be fully registered._

_He finds he can put his soul anywhere, and it'll stay there until he comes back, so long as he concentrates when he breathes out. He attaches it to the ragged blue teddy which sits at the end of his bed and leaves it there for a whole day. The feeling is strange – a sense that something isn't quite right. It doesn't stop him being able to do anything, it doesn't slow his reactions, but it leaves his emotions dull and heavy. The schoolboy taunts affect him less that day than ever before._

_It's tempting to leave it for longer, but he finds he misses having it. A teddy bear seems like an unfitting place to put it, anyway. It's not safe. If something happened to his bear, something would happen to his soul._

_That is the day he decides, because if something happened to them, it would happen to him, he would never give his soul to anyone he couldn't live without._

_At the time, it all seems very logical._

 


	6. A Worry

A year passes. Sherlock grows thinner, tightly-strung, more ruthless, more paranoid, and more unhappy. He gets lost within himself and the rhythm that is John's breathing; after twelve months it's rarely gone from him. In moments where he's running and hiding, or chasing and hitting, he might forget about it, but it always comes back as soon as he tries to catch his breath.

He spends the rare times before he falls asleep hoping for dreams that show John going about his life, buying food, crossing a road – watch out for that car, too close, should be more careful – and starting his job again. Either it's at a different clinic, or they've decided to change the wallpaper. He watches John move on from him. John has friends. John has a life. John is happy.

Sherlock is glad one of them is.

His work is taking longer than he'd ever imagined it would. He's been to Russia, China, Mexico, Hawaii. He doesn't remember half of the places; time slips by so quickly he doesn't realise it's moving.

The closest he gets to England is Scotland, looking for a missing link to his next assassin. It's twenty-one months since he died and, standing next to a house belonging to an ex-assassin on the Scottish moors and staring into the distance, he feels the time like nails being hammered into his spine. Everything aches. He'd walked over four hills, only to find out his link had died two weeks ago, from a heart attack.

London seems very close. Four hundred miles or so doesn't seem all that bad, when compared with the thousands that have been between him and John for the past…is it nearly two years already?

Sherlock, investigating the man's house under the pretence of being a distant cousin in the hope of finding something to warm the trail again, discovers that two can play at the 'fake your death' game. He suddenly finds himself confronted with a pistol and a lot of swearing.

He survives with two broken fingers and a bruised eye, and retreats to lick his wounds; his fingerprints are no longer on the system, and Mycroft will take care of any problems with the police. According to information blurted under the threat of a bullet to the temple, Sherlock has found out he has to go back to America. London becomes very distant, very quickly.

He can't go back. There are names being passed around, names of top operatives, of people capable of re-starting Moriarty's network. These are the people he needs to find.

John's emotions hover constantly at the edge of his mind. Sometimes John will hurt himself, perhaps stubbing his toe or falling on the stairs, and Sherlock will have ghostly bruises on top of the real ones. He's almost thankful for it, because knowing John is alive helps.

* * *

John finds himself, even after two years, entirely unable to move on from Sherlock, even though he stops being miserable. Yes, his grief eases off, and yes he's grateful for it; at least now he can think about Sherlock without wanting to shout, or cry, or throw things. He learns to remember, but then that's all he seems to do – remember. He doesn't mope about it, but Sherlock's ghost constantly haunts his thoughts.

After a few months he manages to internalise the breathing rhythm until he barely pays attention to it, but his dreams become more intense. He sees Sherlock doing all sorts of bizarre things – climbing walls, trekking through mud, things John had never seen him do when he was alive. He doesn't tell anyone, because it seems ridiculous, but that doesn't help him understand it.

Sometimes he sees close shaves and wakes up screaming for Sherlock to be careful, even though it's impossible to be cautious when you're dead.

He goes back to his mundane job and finds it almost insufferably boring, but he sticks to it all the same, because he has nothing else left to cling to. It's around the same time he decides he's becoming some kind of hypochondriac, constantly suffering from aches and pains, not to mention fatigue and hunger that never seems to be satisfied. It's a distant kind of hurt, unattached, so he puts it down to his imagination.

One time, a pain spasm leaps to his fingers so intensely he cries out, alarming his patients, and has to apologise quickly. He passes it off as a cramp, even though it doesn't feel like one.

His emotions continue to fluctuate, grating on his nerves. He's irritable, and people let him get away with it, because they know who he is and what he's lost. He wishes they wouldn't.

* * *

" _Look what I can do," Sherlock murmurs, leaning forwards and holding out his hands. He's eleven, starting a new school, lonely. Mycroft has been away at university for the past year, no longer there to keep his eyes on him. Sherlock thinks he's forgotten about the souls, about what they can achieve and learn._

_It's a dare. The other children have dared him to do something clever, but they've already discounted his deductions. They've heard them before._

_He breathes, feels the soul sitting in the palms of his hands, and holds it out. They look. Eyebrows rise. Mouths twist into half-smiles, the cruel, mocking kind that only children can pull off with such vigour. Sherlock falters, and thinks he's probably made a mistake._

" _There's nothing there."_

" _Yeah, everyone can breathe. That's a stupid trick."_

" _Weirdo."_

" _Freak."_

" _Hey, Danny, the freak thinks breathing is something special!"_

" _Loser!"_

_Sherlock runs away from them without bothering to put his soul back. He wants to leave it out. He wants rid of it. He hates it. He hates them all._

_He puts the soul in the branches of a tree and tries to get away from it for good. Later the same night, he slips out of the house and goes to retrieve it._

* * *

Sherlock's head hits the floor with a crack that reverberates through the alleyway, fingernails scrabbling at the face of the woman pinning him down – Black Lotus, high rank, dangerous. She has him pinned, cracked, soggy stones pressing into his back like unfriendly knuckles, and he chokes and kicks as she presses a hand over his mouth, pinching his nostrils shut, cutting off air. He snarls silently, whipping his head back and forth in a desperate attempt to shake her off.

* * *

John, still with the kettle pouring water onto a teabag, stops dead. A sharp pain radiates through the back of his head, and then he stops breathing. Something seems to tighten around his neck; air hits the roof of his mouth and refuses to leave it. The kettle drops, pouring scalding water onto the tiles, burning his feet with a sharp stinging sensation through his socks, as he sinks to the ground, gasping.

* * *

Sherlock feels his head spin, rain pattering onto his forehead as he stops kicking, lets himself go limp, waits. His eyes are closed and his lips stop trembling. He is dead, he tells himself. He must be dead, or she'll never let go. His chest is drained as an unfilled glass, hollow with empty agony.

* * *

John puts a hand to his chest and clutches it, panic forcing his wide. He can't breathe. He's having a heart attack. His neck feels like someone has it in a vice grip, like the time he got himself tangled up in the sheets of his bunk bed when he was small and nearly choked to death. Harry found him then. No-one will find him now. He looks around for the phone, can't spot it. The water begins to burn his knees as his vision swims.

* * *

She releases her hold, and Sherlock forces himself to kick up before he can give himself away by inhaling. His cheeks are flushed from exertion, muscles burning, but he has the element of surprise – it seems that, no matter how many times you die, people never expect you to come back. His feet make contact with her hips, and his hands make contact with her face. He digs his fingernails into her eyes, both of them snarling as the rain pours down on them, masking the sound.

* * *

John pitches forwards, gasps, and begins to breathe.


	7. A Mistake

Sherlock sleeps only when he has to; in strange hotel rooms, at the sides of busy roads, in ditches, in his clothes. He's taken to wearing a simple black hooded jacket, but he keeps the hood down. Having it up makes people feel threatened; they're more likely to notice him. Blending in is key. Hoodies and jeans are the best for that – no matter which country, or what sort of area he's in, people are wearing them.

Apparently, globalisation has its uses.

It's an advantage that has allowed him to tail his target for over two hours without being spotted. He's in Spain, lost amongst the bustling crowds, waiting to get his man alone. Follow them until they get home, until it's dark and they've locked their doors and windows, and are content that will keep them safe. Then strike.

Sherlock can pick almost any lock there is. Of course, people are careful – some of them have bolts and chains, reinforced glass and alarms. But even criminals answer the door when the bell rings. Sherlock's learned to time his entrance correctly – he never calls after eight in the evening. At six o'clock he can enter a house under cover of darkness and create no more misgiving than the usual paranoia people feel when letting strangers into their home.

It's midnight by the time his target decides to return, too late to call round and pretend to be a causal visitor. The lock on the door is accompanied by a bolt, almost impossible to break without a significant amount of noise, but the windows around the back have simple locks, easy to manage. Sherlock knows he can leave the whole thing, wait until tomorrow evening, but doesn't want to. He wants to get this over with quickly. The time spent away from John is eating him. Every day is a waste; every day is madness and frustration that he's getting nowhere.

So, he decides to break in the same night. At the time, he doesn't know it's a mistake.

He waits until all the lights are out, and then waits another hour. Squatting in the bushes, hidden by brambles and dead flowers, it makes him laugh to have a procedure for murder. That's what he's become. Murderer. The people he is killing aren't nice people, certainly, but every now and then he'll remember he based his career around catching murderers. It's not as if he has a choice; it's kill or be killed most of the time. Some of the small fry he leaves at prison stations, and some of the bigger ones he leaves for Mycroft, but an awful lot of them end up dead, because it's all he can manage to do.

Over the months he's gathered a collection of lock picks, some makeshift and some not. Number three works just fine. The window clicks open with little noise, and he heaves himself onto the ledge to wiggle through, landing with a soft thump on cheap linoleum. He straightens up, takes a knife from his pocket and pads through the hallways, barely breathing. The lights are off in the lounge, but he checks it anyway. Empty. The flooring is cheap, as is the wallpaper, and most of the furniture. All inexpensive, slightly gaudy.

Sherlock frowns; he knows for a fact this man earns hundreds of thousands every year. The house is large one – why isn't it decorated as such?

He makes his way quickly up the stairs and checks the bedrooms and bathrooms one by one. They're all empty, beds made, wardrobes devoid of clothing. His breathing quickens; this is not his mark's house. No-one lives here. They're on holiday, visiting friends, god knows what. Sherlock's been led on a wild goose chase – the assassin must have spotted him earlier in the day and brought him here to throw him off the scent whilst he escaped. Come to think of it, he had hesitated when he entered the house. Sherlock had assumed he'd been looking for his key – stupid,  _stupid_ ; he was picking the lock. If the family was away there would be no bolt across. Sherlock almost curses out loud, angry at being tricked – it all takes time, more and more time.

The bolt. Sherlock had been watching the back of the house, ready to slip through the window. He'd assumed the assassin had left via the front door, but he knows the bolt is still across – he'd seen it when he'd lingered in the hallway mere minutes ago.

He turns around too late to stop the carving knife – stupid, Sherlock, should have noticed it was missing – sinking effortlessly into his stomach.

* * *

John hadn't considered holding a Christmas party before Greg had suggested it; he assigned 'Christmas party' to the time where Sherlock was real instead of a memory that haunted him day in, day out. But, after some consideration and more than a little prodding from both Greg and Mrs Hudson, he had agreed.

He has to admit, he's enjoying it more than he'd expected. There are even the same number of guests there had been last time; Mrs Hudson has replaced one Holmes with another and invited Mycroft. Molly and Greg are conversing quietly with him in the corner, laughing every now and then. John had been talking to Mrs Hudson, but she's gone back downstairs to get her 'special mince pies'. John doesn't know what's special about them, but he has a feeling it's alcohol related.

He stands up, grabbing his half-empty wine glass, and wanders over to their huddle; Molly and Mycroft immediately step aside to admit him, and he dismisses the paranoid thoughts he'd been having, that they were talking about him; he hates people discussing his health behind his back. He's fine. He's older, more tired, sadder, but he's fine. He doesn't like people worrying.

"Merry Christmas," Greg says, clinking his glass against John's. Molly adjusts the strap of her blue dress – nothing like the one she'd worn last time, shorter and lighter – and smiles shyly, dimples showing. Mycroft is more relaxed than John has seen him before, although the tension lines around his eyes show him to be a man used to working under stress, and a man who's suffered losses. John has the same lines.

"Lovely party," Molly says hastily, sipping her wine and leaving a red smear at the corner of her mouth. Everyone is too polite to point it out to her. "Nice idea."

"Yes," he says, smiling to show he's fine. Absentmindedly, he brings up a hand to touch his neck as he feels something pulse against it. Imagination, of course. He quickly puts his hand in his trouser pocket. "I'm glad I did it now. Although, I miss the violin."

There's a pause – there always is when he mentions Sherlock – but they rise to the challenge more efficiently than anyone else he knows, nodding and muttering assent after just a couple of seconds, rather than leaving the silence to drag out into ten or twenty heartbeats. To his surprise it's Molly who speaks first, her cheeks flushing.

"I…I think we should do a toast to…to Sherlock. Because…well, because he was a good friend."

"A good man," Greg murmurs without hesitation.

"Yes. And…I suppose we all miss him." She blushes even more deeply, but John can't tell whether it's from natural shyness at speaking out in front of them, or from passion for what she's saying. "And, wherever he is now…" She swallows, bobbing on her heels. "We all want him to be…h-happy."

The silence is more drawn out this time as John ponders what Molly's just said – there's a glitter in her eyes that sets him on edge – but then Greg raises his whiskey glass and derails the train of thought, breaking the tension.

"To Sherlock."

Mycroft nods stiffly, inclining his own glass. John is in the act of bringing his wine towards the ceiling when something hits him like a train to the stomach, slicing white agony across his abdomen. At first he thinks he's been shot, surprise and panic making his adrenal glands kick in reflex. He feels his face drain of colour, and has it confirmed that it's not all in his head by the looks the others are giving him; surprised, scared, worried.

"Jesus…" John grinds out, staggering backwards and falling into the nearest armchair, breathing irregular and shallow – taking in air burns. It makes him want to heave. He barely notices the fact he's dropped his wine glass, red bubbling onto the carpet, staining it bloody. He feels like he's bleeding; he feels drawn-out and pained as he presses his hands over his stomach and squeezes. It makes it worse. "Jesus Christ…"

"What is it?" Greg says, leaning down to get a closer look. Molly is hovering behind him, looking surprised. Mycroft just stands, staring. "What's wrong?"

John shakes his head. "I don't know," he pants, desperately pulling up his jumper and shirt, fingers tangling in the fabric, half-expecting to see some kind of gaping wound. There's nothing. It looks normal. "It was like…god; it was like I'd been-"

A shock goes through him, a judder as if he'd fallen to the floor and had his whole body shaken, and he cries out again. His throat feels boiling hot, like someone's wrapped an electric cable around it and turned on the power, making his already-laboured breathing more difficult.

"What is it?" Molly squeaks. "What's happening to him?"

John lets out a groan – already she's referring to him as if he isn't there, that's never a good sign when you're a patient – and chokes air down desperately, curling his legs into his chest and holding his arm over his stomach, protecting it.

"Call an ambulance," Greg half-shouts. He looks very sober all of a sudden. Molly's already obeying, pulling her phone out of her bag and pressing numbers with trembling hands. "Do you know what it is?" he murmurs. "Is it your appendix?"

The shot in the dark might have amused John if he wasn't on the verge of passing out. "No idea," he croaks. "Hurts like fuck."

"Yeah, I can tell. You're as white as a sheet." Greg inexpertly presses a hand to John's stomach and John hisses and swears at him, curling away from the touch. He can smell iron-stinking blood even though there isn't anything to cause it, and groans again; the last thing he needs is a flashback, he doesn't need it, he doesn't  _want_ it…

It's as he inclines his head away from Greg he's able to look past Molly and see that Mycroft has vanished. He furrows his brow – a small part of him is thinking 'seems an odd thing to do when your host is dying not-so-quietly in a chair', and the rest of him is thinking 'holy shit everything hurts'. It's very confusing. He doesn't like it.

Greg shakes his shoulder. John finds he can't respond, remaining flopped over the arm of the chair with his eyes half closed, breathing shallow.

"Hey, you're not leaving us are you? John? John?"

* * *

"Where are you, Sherlock?"

Sherlock has the loudspeaker activated on his phone, head resting next to it as he curls on the floor, fingers bloody and stiff. He's ruined the carpet. He hopes vaguely that the person whose house it is doesn't mind too much. "How…?" he murmurs. Mycroft, no matter what his insufferable brother might want to think, is not a god. Sherlock should, by rights, be dying on his own, because of his own stupidity. His fingers slip on the wound, brushing against exposed flesh and veins, and he shudders and moans.

"John felt it too."

Ah. Of course. Why is Mycroft with John? Ow. Doesn't matter. Pain. He hisses softly.

"Tell me where you are." Mycroft sounds worried, his tone strained. "I can get help to you."

Sherlock mumbles the name of the street, the house number, the town, as best he remembers. He forgets to add the country. He thinks of John. Is John feeling more or less pain?

He has time, just before he passes out, to hope to god it isn't more.


	8. A Reassurance

John wakes with a start, sits up, groans, and flops back down again. The three seconds the weak movement takes is enough time for him to work out he's in hospital. Again. He winces at the thought of enduring more tests, more poking and prodding.

He puts a hand down to his stomach, checking for stitches even though he knows there aren't any – he knows what they feel like, even if he's on painkillers. Which he isn't, unless they've forced them down his throat at some point. There are no stitches, no bandages, no drip stand or machinery by the bed, absolutely nothing to indicate there's anything wrong with him. His stomach is sore and tender in a dull sort of way, and his head is light and strange, but that could have been caused simply by lying down too long.

It's his neck, really, that's bothering him the most. It feels as if it's not there, or rather, that something isn't there that should be. He checks, finds everything in order – pulse, Adam's apple, throat, yep, all accounted for. But the skin is cold and clammy. He feels like a weight has been…not taken away completely, but reduced.

Like something's fading.

The breathing rhythm he'd grown accustomed to over the past few months has faded too. He hadn't been dreaming before he woke up.

"Hello?" John murmurs to the room, reaching a hand above his head to touch the empty air. There's no answer, just as before.

He wonders if it's wrong to want a ghost to come back.

* * *

Sherlock feels like someone has driven a railroad spike into his stomach and left it there. Whenever he tries to move he winces, hisses, and has to give up.

It takes what feels like hours for him to open his eyes without dropping off again, an infuriating game of 'catch-me-if-you-can' with his consciousness. When he attempts to push himself into a vague, slumped, sitting position a hand presses against his shoulder and forces him back down. Even though he can tell they're trying to do it gently a squeak forces its way past his lips as his stomach muscles scream in protest.

Someone speaks very rapidly in a foreign language, and something pricks the back of his hand. Two minutes later he's asleep again.

* * *

John spends a confusing few days falling asleep, waking up, and falling asleep again with apparently little control over it. One of the nurses asks him if he has narcolepsy after he drops off in the middle of some tests to see if anything's wrong with his abdomen, but he's able to reassure that no, he doesn't. He's just run down, or ill. They accept the explanation only because they can't seem to find out why it's happening.

At the end of the three very bizarre, unproductive days John is discharged with no answers, and no advice except 'don't drive'. The impromptu napping has begun to ease off, and although the pain in his stomach intensifies with each passing hour, he doesn't say so. He wants to get out of the damn hospital; he hates taking up bed space he knows they could be using for someone actually in need of help. There's nothing wrong with him. It's proved by the tests.

The one thing that does improve is the sensation around his neck, which is back to being warm and fuzzy rather than ice cold. The breathing has returned as well, although it's quieter than before; he can only feel it if he sits very still. Even so, he finds it reassuring. He tells no-one.

Greg dutifully comes by after work to get him. John, wearing the same clothes he'd been wearing three days ago at the party and shivering from the effects of the December air, lands into his passenger seat with a thump, suppressing a wince as his stomach twinges. He's been taking paracetamol for it when the nurses weren't looking, and the pain fluctuates from agonising to bearable, but it constantly saps his strength to bare minimum.

The first thing Greg says is "You've got to stop doing this to me. That's twice you've almost given me a heart attack."

John rolls his eyes, glad he never told Greg about the time he stopped breathing and spilled boiling water all over the floor. "Yeah, you've got me; I'm doing it on purpose."

Greg takes the next turn too sharply, jolting them in the seats. "You know that's not what I meant."

With a sigh, John scrubs a hand over his face. "Sorry. I'm just so…so bloody tired. And sore. And I still don't know why."

"Maybe you're stressed. These past three years…they haven't been great for you."

"You can say that again," John snorts. "God knows what this is. Probably be some kind of rare and undetectable condition that'll finish me off when I'm least expecting it."

He means it to be a joke, but Greg doesn't find it funny, if the way his lips are pressed together is anything to go by. They don't speak for the rest of the drive.

* * *

_Sherlock is fifteen and more bored than he remembers being in a long time. There's nothing to do, nothing to say. He can hear his parents shouting, but even that has lost the sense of fear that used to come with it – now it's just part of the background noise, something his mind has learned to tune out._

_He has a bottle of wine half-drunk at his feet. He'd stolen it out of boredom, because drinking is something adults do to stop being bored, but all it's done is make his head ache and his mouth numb. He curls his lip in disgust and shoves the bottle to one side, spilling wine on the carpet, where it bubbles and sinks obediently. He's still bored._

_Mycroft is home for the holidays. He finds Sherlock, takes in the room and the wine in less than a second, sighs, and sits on the bed._

" _You know, that really was quite stupid of you."_

" _What?" Sherlock mutters, not in the mood to talk. He and Mycroft don't speak a lot nowadays. Sherlock doesn't admit it, but this is the first time in weeks he's had a conversation with anyone in his family that doesn't involve shouting._

" _Spilling the wine. It was already entirely obvious it was gone, and now you've just proven, beyond any doubt, who took it."_

_Sherlock rolls his eyes. "Go away Mycroft."_

" _Put salt on the carpet. It'll help bring out some of the stains."_

_Sherlock remains stubbornly silent._

" _Have you been doing anything else stupid whilst I was away?"_

_Mycroft has light in his eyes, of fear and apprehension, a look he always gets when he's talking about the thing they usually refuse to talk about, which they still haven't told mummy about. Now he's older, Sherlock understands – she hates the abnormal. She'd had their aunt committed to a mental hospital; an aunt Sherlock and Mycroft know isn't crazy, merely eccentric. God knows what mummy would do if she knew her two only sons could somehow detach a part of themselves and hold it in the palms of their hands. It's taken him at least ten years to understand that. It'll probably take longer for him to accept it._

" _No. Nothing stupid." Not yet._

" _You can call me, if you want. If you need to talk to someone; I'm not busy with work all the-"_

" _I don't want to talk to anybody."_

* * *

"…really quite stupid of you…"

Sherlock groans as he drags himself into the world of 'relatively conscious', recognising the voice even with his eyes glued shut by exhaustion and pain. "Shuddup Mye…"

There's a long pause – long enough for Sherlock to nearly drop off again. Mycroft speaks just in time to prevent it, his voice low and husky. "Back in the land of living, I see."

"Obvi-" Sherlock stops to breathe and tries again. "Obvious."

"Humour me, Sherlock. I have flown all the way to Spain to make sure you're safe."

Sherlock snorts, nostrils flaring. There's a tube in his nose, and it pinches when he tries to sniff. "Didn't tell you to."

"No. You never do."

Mycroft has been drinking – not heavily, but a little. In the supreme cleanliness of the room any smell can be picked up. Sherlock opens half an eye, tries to focus, and gives up, looking in Mycroft's general direction with a carefully cultivated blank expression.

"John?"

"Perfectly fine. He's confused and sore and has several doctors baffled, but apart from that he's making a full recovery."

"Good for him," Sherlock slurs.

"It was incredibly fortunate I was there," Mycroft snaps. "You told me you would be careful."

Irritation lends Sherlock enough energy to open his other eye and arrange his expression into a glare. "Didn't get stabbed on purpose."

"I should hope not." Mycroft sighs. "Go back to sleep."

"No. Dull."

"You nearly died, Sherlock; the recovery process is very likely to be dull."

Sherlock rolls his eyes. He won't admit he just wants to sleep – that would show weakness. He's not weak. He's tired, that's all. "Why are you here?"

"To make sure you aren't questioned by the Spanish police. To make sure you don't end up dead."

"Stupid risk."

"Necessary."

"Hm." Sherlock knows there's something else – Mycroft wouldn't have come to see him unless he had information or a message that they can't risk passing through five satellites. Must be something big. He wonders if John has guessed – or does he hope? – and then dismisses it, because John's far too practical to even entertain the notion. And Sherlock's tired, too tired to work it out, spaced out on painkillers which don't quite smother the throbbing in his stomach.

"Sherlock?"

He blinks. "Mm?"

"…Nothing."


	9. A Gamble

Two weeks later Sherlock is sitting up in bed and looking vaguely human, although he's sticky and exhausted and sore. He'll live. He can feel John's breathing again, and it's comforting.

Mycroft shows up every few days without warning, because they can't communicate outside of the hospital, and even talking inside is a risk. Sherlock has learned he's been put down in the records under the nicely mundane name of 'James Green' and Mycroft is his cousin rather than brother. They call each other James and Michael when the nurses are anywhere nearby.

Mycroft arrives just as Sherlock's latest dose of painkillers is wearing off, meaning his brain is sharper, pain grinding at the edges of his consciousness and forcing him to be alert.

"We've found him," is the first thing Mycroft says after he's sat down and crossed his legs. Sherlock, about to make a remark along the lines of 'what, no grapes?' stops, mind flashing through bits and pieces of information scraped and chiselled out of dying men and women.

"Moran."

Mycroft nods, a sharp jerk of the head, curt and non-excessive. "One of the people you left for us. Briggs. It took persuasion, but he came out with it eventually. You were right – Moran is the one keeping the pieces of the organisation together, now that Moriarty is gone."

Sherlock doesn't bother asking why Mycroft has waited two weeks to tell him this, knowing the answer will be something along the lines of 'I didn't want you taking stupid risks'. As if he could have. He can barely walk even now, although he won't accept any form of help, preferring to lean against a wall than a comforting arm.

"Where is he?"

Footsteps sound outside the room, accompanied by the swift babble of a conversation in a foreign language, and Mycroft waits until both voices and feet fade away before replying.

"In London."

Sherlock's head snaps up. "John."

"So it seems. Moran isn't convinced your dead – he'll be waiting for you to go back home."

Sherlock twitches at the mention of 'home'. It seems too distant, an unrealistic expectation.

"And you haven't picked him up yet?" He tuts. "You're getting awfully slow, Mycroft."

He never expects Mycroft to laugh, and he isn't disappointed. "He's not an easy man to find."

"I can find him."

"That, I don't doubt."

* * *

" _Mycroft, did you ever tell anyone?"_

" _What about?"_

" _You know what about. Don't play stupid, it's tedious."_

" _No-one."_

" _I tried to, when I was younger."_

" _I know."_

" _They didn't believe me."_

" _Never expect anyone to believe you, especially if they don't want to in the first place."_

* * *

London is greyer than he remembers. Sherlock, with his stomach still sore but his legs mostly in working order, smokes for the first time in three years as he waits for his homeless network to get back to him with an address he knows will be the tipping point. He'll succeed, or he'll fail. If he fails, he knows he'll likely end up dead.

The rush of nicotine is guilty, charging his body.

* * *

John, in the middle of shifting papers around on the kitchen table, hesitates, frowning. "Mrs Hudson?" he calls into the hall. "Can you smell smoke?"

She pops her head around the door and takes an experimental sniff. "No."

"Oh." He sighs. "It's like…cigarettes." His eyes flick to the mantelpiece, to the empty spot where the skull used to sit – it's one of the many possessions of Sherlock's he'd had to move to be able to carry on living in 221b. There are whole boxes of stuff in Sherlock's old room he knows he'll never have the strength go through. Best to just let things lay. "Reminded me of him, for a second."

Mrs Hudson gives him a sympathetic smile, but doesn't say anything before vanishing into the hall again. John touches his neck, feels an inhalation pressed against his own chest, and sighs.

"Still there, eh?" he murmurs to the room in general. He's been talking to himself more over the past weeks. At least, that's what he'd told Mrs Hudson when she'd heard him the other day. Talking to ghosts isn't something he's sure he should admit to anyone. "You don't have to stop here, you know. If you don't want. It's been three years, I can manage."

The breathing stays. The cigarette smoke lingers until his nostrils grow used to it, and he goes back to aimlessly pushing papers around.

* * *

The address is abandoned. That doesn't surprise Sherlock – abandoned houses are wonderful places to hide, especially if no-one cares about what happens to them. If you're careful, no-one will see you going in or out, because no-one gives a damn.

He's more cautious this time, nerves sending sparks of semi-phantom pain shooting across his abdomen every time he shifts. He's been watching the house for almost a whole day, sitting on a damp street corner with his hood pulled up around his face, keeping out of sight. He's in London; he can't afford to be recognised. Not at this stage. Home is so close he can touch it.

The rain patters off his shoulders, but he isn't allowing himself to get too cold, keeping his hands tucked under his arms. The last thing he needs is numb fingers. His chest is throbbing, reminding him every second how near and how far he is, keeping him warm, quelling shivers.

Someone tosses a ten pence piece in his lap. It makes him want to smile, but he's too busy staring at the wall of the house, taking in every detail, every entrance and exit, the nooks and crannies he knows he can use later. He can't drag his attention away long enough to rearrange his facial muscles, not to suit a petty whim, a flash of gratitude. Not because of the ten pence, but because someone has shown him…is it caring? Not many people care about him nowadays.

At the same time as the coin falls Sherlock's chest pulses with a strange, satisfying spread of warmth, as if he'd just taken a long drink of something hot and heavy. He blinks and looks up, pressing a hand to his heart – sentimental, stupid – but the street is empty again. There's no-one there, nothing to indicate there ever was. He pulls his gaze back to the house and continues to stare at it, filing the information away.

* * *

John buys milk because he feels like going for a walk, rather than because he needs it; he already has a full bottle in the fridge, but the air in the flat is too hot, too musty, and he feels like walking in a drizzle. His neck is warm and heavy, choking him like a scarf or jumper pulled too tight.

It's been worse, the past few days. The breathing rhythm has intensified, and he feels it every waking second. It regulates him, dazes him, and comforts him. He can't forget about it; the only solution is to walk, as so he does, spending very little time in the shop and getting out into the grey air as soon as he can, breathing deeply. He's fine. Everything's fine.

As a distraction, he drops a coin in the lap of someone sitting on the street corner.

* * *

Sherlock slides the ten pence absentmindedly into his pocket as he gets to his feet. It's dark. If he stays out much longer he'll be too cold to be any good in a fight, and he knows there's going to be a fight. Moran is not a man to give away his life willingly.

He slips into the garden whilst the moon's behind a cloud, wraps strips of clothing around his hands to keep himself from cutting them, and scrambles like a naughty teenager through a broken window. He's working entirely on autopilot, has both every and no idea what he's doing. Everything has been planned, remembered and understood, but now he's here the whole scenario has become unreal to him; he's waited for the end for so long it's impossible to register. He wonders if that's normal, or if three years of sleep deprivation are catching up on him all at once.

The house creaks, and the walls twist around him, encasing him, enticing him. He rests a hand on the banisters and looks up at the light coming from the top of the stairs. When he treads, he treads at the very edge of the steps, where it's less likely to creak, and he checks every stair with a heel first. He has his knife grasped in a clenched fist.

The door at the top of the staircase is lit with a minute glow, a torch, or even a candle – candlelight, he has discovered, is surprisingly useful for providing just enough brightness to see by. It doesn't spread far enough for other people to notice it, unless they're looking closely.

Sherlock's looking very closely.

His eyes are fixed on the bottom of the door as he thinks for a way out, a way round, a way to get in without ruining the element of surprise. He's just about decided to wait at the side of the door until Moran comes out when he feels something cold touch the base of his skull, feather-light, almost caressing it. Gun barrels can appear friendly if you can't see the person holding them, even if you know who it is. The knife is gone from his hand before he can hide it up his sleeve.

"Did you really think I wouldn't recognise you?"

Moran has a voice like a tiger. Sherlock speaks because people don't usually ask questions and shoot you before they get an answer, but if they don't get any reply, they can change their mind.

"Obviously. Otherwise I wouldn't be here."

The metal barrel twitches against the vertebra of his neck. "You're very proud for a man with a gun to his head. Would have thought playing dead for three years would have knocked some of that arrogance out of you."

"People always surprise you."

He feels Moran nod. "True. John Watson, for example. Very surprising man. Sent home wounded, finds someone to pick him out of the gutter, watches the same man jump off a building, and picks himself up the second time. Brave man. Less stupid than you, more ignorant. He doesn't have a clue you're still kicking, does he?"

Sherlock gives the answer he thinks is more likely to keep John safe, although he's not sure there is one. The thought of John dying scares him more than the thought of a bullet lodged in his brain, somewhere in the hippocampus, perhaps. Although, it'll probably just tear straight through. "None."

"You had a deal, you know. You die, John, and the rest of your friends, live. Only you're still here."

Sherlock presses his mouth tightly together and tries to pretend he isn't shaking.

"Not for long, though." Moran is almost crooning. "Not for very long."

There's a short silence. Sherlock feels blood pounding in his ears, between his eyes, imagines it racing through the ventricles of his heart and into his jugular.

Something explodes.

* * *

John jerks in his chair, pressing a hand to his neck and gasping as a shock goes through his whole body, heart racing. Panic spreads in a second from his head to his fingertips, and then fades into a dull throb that tugs at him even after he's slid to the floor.


	10. A Rejection

Sherlock knows he should be angry, but the fact is he can't find the energy.

"I had it under control," he murmurs in Mycroft's general direction, not bothering to look up from the patch of floor he's sitting on. Mycroft stands, because Mycroft probably doesn't want to get his suit dirty.

"Oh, entirely." Mycroft has a face suited to sarcasm. It's a family trait. "Forgive me for making precautions. After the Spanish…fiasco…"

"You used me."

"I sent you to find Moran. I never said I wouldn't be following you."

"I could have managed. You didn't have to let your goons…" He's too tired to finish the sentence, so he lets it drop off the end of his tongue like dried-out bubblegum.

"Shoot him? I disagree. What were you going to do, push him down the stairs?"

"Yes." He says it just to be contrary, to be defiant, to show he's not beaten, but he can't summon the vigour to put conviction in his speech, and he knows it.

Mycroft rolls his eyes. "Go home, Sherlock. There's nothing more for you do here."

Sherlock looks at him blankly. His neck is throbbing, grinding on his nerves. It's infuriating.

"I said, go home. It's over." Mycroft pokes Sherlock's toe with his umbrella. "Home."

"I don't have a home." He almost laughs; a hysterical, dreamy grin spreads across his face. "I haven't had a home for three years."

Mycroft gives him a look he usually reserves for the less intelligent and more pathetic members of society.

"You have John."

* * *

John is standing in front of the mirror, probing his neck and frowning – the bloody thing's hurting him like hell, driving him mad – when he hears the stairs creaking. Loudly. Mrs Hudson is too light to creak when she comes up the stairs, and she always moves slowly because of her hip. The fact the door's not locked makes him uncomfortable. He's been feeling edgy ever since a spasm of terror, pure absolute terror, had knocked him from his chair to the floor and made him kneel for minutes, hours, he doesn't know how long.

It could be anyone – anyone taller or heavier than Mrs Hudson, who walks quickly. Greg, perhaps. Not Mycroft, he's too graceful to move rapidly. John knows he should call out, but he doesn't. Perhaps it's the sensation of a noose tightening around his neck that makes him paranoid, or perhaps it's a simple gut instinct, but he remains silent. His gun is upstairs, and he knows it's too late to get it; there's a shadow showing under the door, and if he can see them, they will be able to see him the second he crosses the room. The kitchen light is off, and he retreats to the relative safety of the darkness, reaching for the nearest weapon he can find – a vase his aunt gave him for Christmas, which is so ugly he can't bring himself to put it in the lounge. He's trying not to breathe, but it's difficult; the ghost is back in full force, gasping in his ears. He wishes it would pick its timing more conveniently.

The person outside knocks, not on the door, but on the frame; the sound produced is solid rather than hollow. John doesn't know anyone who does that, not since Sherlock…better not think about that.

The handle turns. John retreats even further into the darkness, until he's hidden around the side of the kitchen archway. If it was someone he knew they would have called out to him by now. This person wants to surprise him, wants to hurt him. He holds his breath, and his eyes begin to water from the effort.

Footsteps sound softly on the carpet, so softly he wouldn't have heard them if he hadn't been listening carefully. The person moves around the lounge, passing twice in front of the entrance to the kitchen. John can't make out their face in the dim light; they're wearing a hooded jacket, and the hood is pulled up around their shoulders, obscuring his view. Any second now, they're going to come to the kitchen.

The person touches a hand to the fireplace, and then moves swiftly towards where John is standing. John panics; they're moving faster than he'd expected, and he assumes they must have worked out where he's standing, have heard his breathing, heard the ghost's breathing. Their face becomes a blur; their hands, which are tensed into fists, pose a threat. So John strikes first.

The vase shatters when he slams it down on their head, effectively bringing them up short with a harsh cry he barely hears; he has no more than a heartbeat before he feels a sharp pain that sends a spike through his temples, and his vision blurs as he staggers forwards, ending up on all fours, gasping, trying desperately not to lose consciousness. He doesn't understand; nothing had touched him, there's no reason for him to feel so dizzy. He's vaguely aware that the intruder has fallen to their knees, swearing, arms wrapped over their head. If he hadn't been able to see exactly where their hands were for himself, he would have thought they were trying to strangle him. His throat feels so tight he can barely breathe. His pulse kicks angrily in his neck.

"Get back!" he snarls as the person begins to unwind their arms. He grabs for a piece of the shattered vase and holds it out in front of him. "You're not getting anything from me. Go, before I call the police."

He gets the impression he'd be far more assertive if his head weren't throbbing so much. He thinks about standing up, but everything spins, and he hastily gives up on the idea. Better to stay down – he can still be threatening on their level, and collapsing won't do him any good.

"Please."

It's not a word he's been expecting, and he blinks in the darkness. Their voice is familiar, something close and painful that reminds him of buttered toast on a cold morning, the kind of breakfast he used to eat before Sherlock had pulled the rug out from under his life. The sort of voice that had belonged to Sherlock. He grips the piece of vase more tightly, until it cuts into his palm and becomes damp with blood.

"Get out. Whoever you are, get out."

"John, please…"

"Get out!" He won't be tricked by the voice; he won't let it affect him. He can't breathe, he can't swallow, he can't do anything apart from shout, and even that is becoming more difficult. His eyes are streaming from the effort of remaining steady. "Get out of my home right now!"

"You know it's me."

It's getting a closer look at the hands that sends realisation through him like a double spark; bursts of fear and ecstasy and anger, one exploding somewhere at the top of his head, one in his chest. The person's hands are slim, bony, long-fingered. John knows them very well; in the past he'd spent far too long patching them up with stitches and antiseptic cream and bandages. They have more scars now, but the one that was done with a flick knife across the knuckles, no more than three years and four months ago, is one he recognises. No-one else has one like it.

"Sherlock."

He doesn't believe it's the ghost, because vases don't shatter when you bring them down on a ghost's head, and he doubts an apparition could have so much solid detail about it; the scar, the jutting knuckles, the cheekbones he recognises only because he knows they should be there. Sherlock's face has gotten so thin it's almost hollow.

He feels pity. And rage. And pain.

"John, I can explain."

"Don't bother." John sits back on his heels, finally dropping the pottery shard with a soft click onto the lino. And then, because he can't stop himself, he brings both hands up to his neck and holds it, swallowing dryly. The sensation of his palms against his skin doesn't do anything to ease the agony shooting through his muscles, spine, throat, every single inch of his head and neck. He's so distracted he can barely string together a coherent sentence. "You tricked me. It was all fake. Of course. Why should you care?"

"Don't say…"

"Say what? That you didn't care?" He gets to his feet, and he realises he's had this speech nestling inside him, lodged like a traitor at the back of his mind. He's a soldier; he always has a backup plan, no matter how improbable the need for it may be.

"John…"

John doesn't go into his speech – Sherlock's pronunciation of his name stops him. Sherlock sounds so tired, so resigned, that it makes John suddenly exhausted, as if someone's placed a millstone on his head. Sherlock doesn't need a lecture, and John doesn't want to give it. He files Plan B away.

"Get out."

Sherlock stares at him. "John, it's me."

"I know." He's not crazy. He knows perfectly well who it is. "Get out."

"John, I can-"

John loses patience, grasps Sherlock by the shoulder and hauls him roughly to his feet with a guttural snarl. "I said get out! I don't want you here, I don't  _need_ you here."

His hand brushes Sherlock's skin, and it's like he's been burned. The noose around his neck tightens. But he has to do this; he has to get Sherlock away from him right now. He can't stand to look at him. Every second is an agony, and after so many months of thinking how wonderful it would be to have Sherlock swirl back into his life, no matter the cost, he realises now he can't handle it. Dead men don't come back. And John had been so sure he was dead, so sure his ghost was somewhere nearby. Now, he has to acknowledge the fact he'd been losing it – hearing breathing, feeling a presence, all day, every day. He's scared. A ghost had been a far more comfortable option than exploring, in detail, every inch of his sanity, and finding it unsatisfactory.

He has the door open within a second, and forces Sherlock out of it within two, but he can't quite get it closed in time before Sherlock sticks his foot out. The door bounces back in John's face, narrowly missing his nose.

"I said get out!" He tries to ram the door closed, forcing his shoulder against it. Sherlock's face contorts as his toes are brutally crushed in the small gap, which grows smaller as John pours what little energy he has left into the effort. "Get out, get out, get out!"

"Please."

John's convinced Sherlock hasn't said anything besides his name and 'please' in the whole two minutes he's known he was alive, and that irritates him. It doesn't add up with his rose-tinted memories of a man who was fascinating and superior, sharply dressed and even more sharply tongued. This Sherlock is tired, and empty, and John is too tired and empty himself to handle him. They're both too damaged.

Sherlock tries to shoulder the door back open, and fails. He has his face very close to John's neck, practically staring at it, and John, sick of everyone gawking and poking at his bloody neck, only makes a fresh attempt on the door. It clicks shut, and he has it locked in a second. For a minute or two Sherlock bangs on the frame and calls, but he gives up very quickly, too quickly for John's liking.

Almost as if he'd known all along how John would react.


	11. A Delay

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings for this chapter: Talk/effects of drug use.

Sherlock doesn't bother waiting for John to repent and open the door again, because he knows he won't. He merely straightens his clothing, rubs the egg-shaped lump on his head, picks the pottery shards out of his hair, and goes onto the street. He's been on the streets a long time, and although the concept of a proper bed for the night had been lovely, he doesn't  _need_  one. Over the past three years, he's got used to not needing much of anything.

He needs John, but John doesn't need him. Eventually, he may let Sherlock see him properly, for just a few minutes, and Sherlock knows he must be content with that.

Getting his soul back now poses an issue. He had been hoping a brief hug, or even a close-quarters fight that would have got him close enough to be able to inhale. But John hadn't even given him that, hadn't even punched him.

He sleeps the night away in front of his own gravestone.

* * *

John spends the night feeling colder than he has in a very long time, shivering and shuddering and twisting the sheets more tightly around himself every few minutes in the vain hope of forcing some warmth into his bones. He sleeps at odd intervals, and every time he does he sees Sherlock, curled up on the ground, looking like a corpse. He accepts Sherlock is on his brain for good, but the acceptance doesn't help him sleep.

He's scared and he's lonely, and he doesn't know whether he should let fear or loneliness win.

He wants to see Sherlock, and he wants to punch him, and then he wants to hold him for a very long time and cook him a half-decent meal and talk to him. And then punch him again.

It's not like he hasn't been suffering. He's been through it all; grief, denial, anger, acceptance. Every time he turns over in the sheets he grows colder, more confused. In his mind's eye he sees Sherlock fall off the rooftop, the word 'goodbye' still ringing in his ears, choked. He'd believed he'd pushed the person he cared about most to suicide with a few careless words, and he's had to live with the terror of that for three years.

He falls asleep convincing himself he hates Sherlock, and always will, but when he wakes he wishes he could hear knocking on the doorframe again.

* * *

" _Mummy will kill you if she finds out."_

_Sherlock, twenty-two, thin, sweaty and feeling as if every inch of his skin is on fire stumbles his way into Mycroft's flat without bothering to be invited. He can barely see; withdrawal saps at his concentration, draws his vision into a tunnel. The sofa doesn't enter his line of sight until he falls onto it. The impact of his legs meeting the cushions feels like granite sticking into his thighs. Everything itches._

" _You won't tell her."_

_Mycroft closes the door with a soft click that makes Sherlock wince. "You promised me you wouldn't start all this again."_

_Sherlock laughs. "We don't all keep our promises, now do we?"_

" _I had to tell her the first time. You would have ended up dead."_

_Sherlock doesn't bother saying he doesn't care whether he lives or dies; death is too boring for him, and Mycroft knows it. The only way he'll die will be if it's both exciting and accidental._

" _I'll get you some water."_

_Sherlock's stomach rolls, and he shakes his head. "No."_

" _You're having some, whether you like it or not. It'll help you…recover."_

" _Piss off."_

" _This is my flat."_

_Sherlock sees the sense in Mycroft's statement and he doesn't like it, so he drinks his water in silence, even though every sip makes his teeth stand on end and his throat contract. Mycroft gets him a bucket, but he stoutly refuses to throw up and give his brother the satisfaction of being right about everything._

" _I will tell her. If you don't stop this, if you do this again, I will make sure she never takes her eyes off you."_

" _You won't."_

 _Mycroft gives him a look that could make small children cry. "Don't_ test _me, Sherlock."_

" _If you tell, I tell."_

_Mycroft knows what he's talking about instantly; one hand begins to stray towards his mouth, before he gets it, like every other aspect of his life, under control._

" _She wouldn't believe you."_

" _I'd find a way to make her."_

_Mycroft curls his lip. Sherlock's glad he can create such an emotion as disgust on his brother's usually iron features._

" _You'd be putting yourself at risk."_

" _You wouldn't tell her I could do it as well, even if I told her about you." He begins to laugh again, hissing the breaths out from between his chattering teeth as he delivers his killer shot. "You_ care  _about me too much."_

_Mycroft has never told Sherlock he cares, but his silence is as good as an answer._

* * *

The few days after John kicks Sherlock out of his house seem like a hallucination. He doesn't know what to believe any more – does he even believe he saw Sherlock? He still feels the ghost. Perhaps the whole thing was a vision, a bad dream.

He wakes on the fourth day – or is it the fifth? – to the sound of his mobile ringing with a shrill wail in his right ear, gropes for it, and presses the answer button without giving himself time to register who it is.

"'lo?"

"John? Are you asleep already?"

It's Greg. John sits up and scrubs a hand blearily over his face, feeling stubble scrape his palm, and glances at his alarm clock. Six in the evening. Oh. He's lost track of the time as well as the days now. Brilliant. His breath hitches in his throat as he feels something electric pass along the tendons in his throat, and he has to breathe carefully for a couple of seconds before he can reply.

"Not been well. What d'you want?"

"You haven't seen him yet?"

John guesses immediately who 'him' is, but he plays stupid because he can't summon the energy to be clever. He doesn't feel clever; he feels sticky and dim and lost.

"Who?"

Greg is frowning; John can hear it in his tone of voice. "He…John, he's alive. Sherlock's alive, he came to see me an hour ago." He hesitates. "I don't know whether I should have told you now, I'd assumed he'd have gone to you first…"

"He did."

"Did what?"

"Come to me first."

The confusion is almost endearing; he feels that Greg is one of the few people who truly knows what Sherlock Holmes is to John. It's the right thing to think; Sherlock means everything. Only, he seems to mean a lot more bad things now he's come back.

John's thoughts feel like scrambled eggs, oozing through his eyes until they begin to water.

"Is he there now? He didn't mention you, I didn't like to keep asking…he didn't really say much…"

"He's not here." John shifts so he's sitting over the side of the bed with his toes curled into the carpet, trying to stay grounded. Every time he forces himself to breathe at his own pace, rather than the ghost's, it feels like someone's wrapped a tight band around his chest. He hopes he isn't having a heart attack. "I threw him out."

"What?"

"I threw him out."

"Oh."

John staggers to his feet and begins to look for socks and shoes. His room his stifling, crushing. The air is thick with confusion and pain, like a battlefield. He needs to get outside, and soon. "I'm not talking to him. If you see him, tell him to piss off."

_What do people usually say?_

_Piss off._

He blinks, wonders where that particular memory had come from, finds the socks he was wearing yesterday, and pulls them on.

"Are you sure that's what you want me to tell him? I can understand you're angry, but he's been away three years. You missed him, and by the looks of him, he missed you. Wouldn't it be better for you to…I don't know, meet him?"

"And say what?"

One of the socks has a hole in, and he thinks it might have belonged to Sherlock. Some of their clothes had got mixed up, in the last joint wash he'd put in three years ago. Sherlock's socks were the only items impossible to distinguish from his own.

"How should I know?"

"Well you seem to think  _I_ should know," John snaps, more bitterly than he'd intended.

"Listen, John, do you want me to come round?"

John shifts the phone and pins it between ear and shoulder as he tugs off his pyjamas and pulls on the first pair of trousers he can get his hands on. "No. I'm going out. No point."

"I thought you weren't feeling well?"

"Feeling better. Wonderful, in fact."

"Perhaps I should come with you." Greg's tone is anxious, but it only makes John want to laugh. "Please, I'd-"

John cuts him off serenely, doing up the buttons on his shirt and heading for the door. "Don't bother."

"Do you want me to-"

"I don't want anything."

* * *

Sherlock feels cold and heavy with exhaustion, and the only reason he goes to answer the phone ringing in the box is because it gives him the excuse to sag against the walls without arousing suspicion. It's also mildly warmer than the street – some of the wind is blocked, although his breath still rises in a mist before his eyes.

"You weren't answering your mobile."

"In which case it was rather pointless you expecting me to answer this phone, wasn't it Mycroft?"

"Obviously not. I am assuming, seeing as you've spent the last four days on the streets, John did not take your return well?"

Sherlock snorts. "I don't see why you care. You've got your man, and that's all you needed from me."

"Don't play stupid. I worry."

Sherlock wonders, briefly, if worrying is the same as caring, then decides he can't be bothered working it out. "What do you want?"

"I wanted to remind you that you can stay with me if you need."  
"I don't need. I'm used to pavements. Sleeping on one is surprisingly good for your posture, providing no-one treads on you." He could paint a wall with his sarcasm, if only he could see it. Something jolts in his chest and he gasps, sending a stripe of agony across the scar stretched over his belly.

"You need to see John."

"He won't let me see him."

Mycroft sighs. Sherlock hears the sound of something, perhaps a pen, being drummed on a flat surface. "He's at the pub. The one he always used to go to, with Mr Stamford. You know it?"

Of course he knows it. He doesn't gift Mycroft with a reply, hanging up as soon as he's finished wiping the moisture of his breath off the tip of his nose.

* * *

" _Mycroft?"_

" _You need to drink this."_

" _Mycroft."_

" _Go on."_

" _Alright, alright. I'm drinking it. Satisfied?"_

" _Not entirely. What do you want?"_

" _Did you ever wonder if you were just delusional? It's all very good material for a psychiatrist – seeing souls. You must have considered it."_

" _Yes."_

" _What made you stop?"_

" _You can do it too."_

" _Maybe we're both mad."_

" _There are worse things to be."_


	12. A Rose

Sherlock buys the flowers because he thinks they might confuse John enough to stop him punching him in public. John is tired, upset, and, if the pain in Sherlock's chest is anything to go by, suffering just as much internal turmoil. He's not a man accustomed to receiving flowers, any more than Sherlock is accustomed to giving them. If he can get close enough to John to take one breath in, he can run away again, back onto the streets, and he won't bother him a second time. But they can't go on the way they are now; their breathing is so closely connected it's restrictive, making his eyes water as he pushes through the late crowds with the rose thorns cutting into his palm sharply enough to send blood trickling down his wrist. He doesn't bother wiping it away; it makes a good substitute for gloves.

* * *

John finds the bar is only marginally better than his flat. It's a change, at least. And it provides him with alcohol, which is a definite plus. He can imagine the strong spirit filtering into his spine, stiffening it. He needs to pull himself together, and quickly, before Greg gets Mycroft or Mrs Hudson or god knows who else onto his case. He's spent more than three years convincing them he's absolutely, completely and totally fine, and he doesn't need their happy illusion shattering.

He finishes his scotch with a grimace and pays for another. Someone pushes past him to get to the bar, leaning a sweaty arm over his head to receive two large glasses of red wine. John watches the alcohol swirl. Wine looks nothing like blood, he realises; it's too light, too free. Not sticky enough. Sherlock, when he'd hit the pavement, had looked very sticky. Obviously, John hadn't been looking closely enough, because he'd been tricked, lied to…

The scotch burns his throat as he tips it back, shuddering. His stomach hurts, and he wonders for a second if drinking was a bad idea, until he realises it's not in the right place to be a normal bellyache. Nor is it superficial; it's somewhere in-between, a hidden agony embedded in his flesh. It's been that way ever since Christmas, and it's doing nothing to improve his mood.

He becomes vaguely aware of a change in atmosphere behind him, something in the way the voices of the people dip, and he turns to see what at first looks to be a disembodied bunch of roses heading towards the bar. He blinks a couple of times, squinting in the dim light.

Once again, it's the hands that give it away, although this time he almost misses the scar; his neck feels heavy, breath catching painfully in his throat. He knows he should do something – either move away before Sherlock can get to him, or prepare to ignore him completely – but the roses throw him off balance. He simply doesn't understand  _why_ they're there.

He lets Sherlock get closer, until it's too late to pretend he hasn't seen him and scuttle off. The flowers go down on the bar with an inelegant thud. He's frozen; every second seems less than a heartbeat, time moving too quickly for him to galvanise himself, to  _do_ something. He just stares.

Sherlock moves forwards, one arm cramped awkwardly against the bar, and the other in mid-air, and John, feeling his throat constrict until he stops breathing, panics, throws out a fist, and catches Sherlock squarely on the jaw.

The people surrounding them seem to stop – John feels a collective breath being held, including his own; his lungs are hurting from lack of oxygen now, his vision fuzzy. Sherlock's look of surprise is almost comical, and the way he falls backwards against the bar even more so, at least until his head cracks against the wooden surface with a jolt that snaps his neck forwards and brings a shock through John's skull down to his collarbones, almost as if he'd been the one landing uncomfortably on the ground with his legs twisted under him.

There's a soft hum of confusion as the people breathe again. John still can't; he still can't stop panicking. Everything's too close, too blurry, and the smell of roses is making him want to vomit. He staggers to his feet, ready to run away, and then he sees the blood coating Sherlock's hands. Sticky. Very real.

Getting down on his knees isn't hard – they collapse from under him almost before he realises he has to stay, to help, to do something that doesn't involve fleeing – but reaching out to touch Sherlock is. It's like touching an iron poker; he can feel something burning. He doesn't understand; his vision is so clogged with tears he's half-blind. All he can see is the blood on Sherlock's hands.

"Jesus…"

"It's alright." Sherlock's fingers, slippery but strong, grip his own. John feels his throat spasm, and he chokes on nothing, flexing his stomach in a desperate attempt to re-oxygenate. "It's not…it's not just from the roses, I pricked myself on the way here…"

He can't hear. He can't think. His eyes are wide and unseeing, Sherlock's features swimming. Even the smell of roses seems to be fading.

* * *

The lack of oxygen is making Sherlock's head feel like it's stuffed with soggy handkerchiefs, but he knows he has to do something now. They're too close to each other, each finding it impossible to breathe, like two wires about to short out. He either has to run, or risk everything, risk exposing himself and John. He doesn't know what will happen, he doesn't understand.

He leans forwards, wraps one arm tightly around the back of John's head, presses his nose close to his neck, and breathes in with a sharp, hollow gasp.

* * *

"I can't believe he threw us out." John adjusts his position on the bench so his spine doesn't ache so much. His neck is cold, which in itself is odd; his neck hasn't been cold in three years. He's had panic attacks before, and he's willing to admit that the one in the bar had been the worst one in…well, ever. He's surprised the effects have worn off so quickly; he's shaking a little, but his breathing is more normal than he remembers it being in a long time, and he doesn't feel pained, or sick, or too hot. He feels…normal.

"You did practically start a bar fight," Sherlock replies. He has one of the roses clasped in his still-bloody hands and is absently turning it round and round; John can see his eyes fixed someplace in the distance.

"I only punched one person."

"I know. I felt it."

"I panicked."

"Right." Sherlock's mouth twitches. "Am I forgiven?"

John glances at him. "No. And put down that bloody rose." Sherlock obeys, and the flower slides forlornly to the pavement. John looks at it for a couple of seconds, frowning. "You bought me roses."

"Observant, as always."

"Why?"

Sherlock twiddles his fingers. "I wanted to distract you from punching me."

It takes a couple of seconds for John to start laughing, but when he does he finds he can't stop. He's left breathless, but in a way that feels comfortable and light. He can't remember the last time he felt so light.

"That little scheme failed, didn't it?"

"Obviously."

John rests his head in his hands, and lets out something between a giggle and a sigh. He doesn't have to be a genius to work out that Sherlock is the first person to make him laugh like that in three years, and they've only been in contact five minutes. It doesn't take a genius to work out that Sherlock is the one thing that seems to make him happy. He doesn't forgive quickly, but he knows he will, eventually.

He just wants to be happy. It's not so much to ask.

"Alright. Let's go home."

Sherlock blinks. "Both of us?"

"Both of us, you daft git." John gets up, bouncing on the balls of his feet. "You need to wash somewhere. You stink."

* * *

Sherlock feels like a circle.

His stomach is full, his breathing is even, his emotions balanced and normal as they ever had been, his chest light but comfortable. He feels lazy and secure; secure isn't a word he's had much cause to use over the past three years. His old bedroom is musty and cramped with boxes he knows he'll have to unpack sooner or later, but right now he can settle back on a mattress instead of a pavement, and feel the warmth of a radiator rather than the chilling wind or wet sleet. Rain patters on the window, and it gives him a burst of almost savage glee to think that he doesn't have to sit in it.

There's a soft knock on his door, and he sits up, pulling the covers around his thin shoulders to keep the warmth trapped. "John?"

"Can I come in?"

Sherlock clears his throat nervously. They haven't had much chance to talk yet, and he doesn't know what John is going to say. Will he report the symptoms he'd undoubtedly had when Sherlock was away? Tell him how disappointed he is in him? Sherlock prays he hasn't changed his mind. The thought of leaving the warm bed now is something that makes him want to groan.

"Yes."

The doors squeaks as John pushes it open. He has his duvet wrapped lazily around his upper body, pyjamas and hair rumpled. "Sorry. Couldn't sleep. Needed to check…" John's mouth twitches. "Check it was all real."

"I'm real."  
"I know." John shuffles over to the bed and sits on one corner of it with a sigh. "You're going to think I'm mad, but…well…no, doesn't matter. Ignore me."  
Sherlock sits up straighter and leans forwards, mind whirring as he goes through every probable excuse he can think of in the hope of explaining away whatever John is about to tell him. "What?"

"Don't laugh, but…when I thought you were…" The words are obviously as difficult for John to say as they are for Sherlock to hear. "Dead. When I thought you were dead, I was sure I had a ghost following me."

Sherlock remembers to look surprised. He can feel his hands shaking under the covers. "A ghost?"

"Yes. I could always hear – I suppose it was more like feel – someone breathing." John chuckles. "I was crazy to believe it, I know, but it made me feel…better."

"I don't think it was crazy."

John raises an eyebrow. "If you say so. But the point is that since this evening, it's gone. I can't hear it any more." He smiles. "That's why I came here – I had to hear it again. Although, I suppose the fact it's gone is my brain telling me that I don't need ghosts to keep me going. I've got the real thing."

"You have," Sherlock promises. "I'm not going anywhere. Not again."

"You'd bloody well better not." John shuffles forwards and, without asking permission, rests his head on Sherlock's shoulder with a tired sigh. Sherlock freezes, bemused, but doesn't push him away. Their huddle of duvets and sheets and ill-fitting nightwear adds to his sense of security, makes him feel stable.

"Are you alright, John?"

"I'm fine. Better than fine." Sherlock feels John's breath against his shoulders. "Just do one thing for me?"

Sherlock blinks slowly in the half light, and brings one hand round to lightly brush John's shoulder. "Anything."

"Keep breathing, so I can always hear you."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed it!

**Author's Note:**

> Normally I wouldn't upload two multi-chaptered fics at the same time, but I really want to get this completed before the new series comes along and re-writes the canon.


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